Tied Notes
by La Maddalena
Summary: What do you do when you're running out of pictures? Wait, of course. / Roxas/Naminé, fifty oneliners.


**A/N: **Unofficial entry for the 1sentence comm at LJ; done as a Christmas gift for my Neesan. Fifty individual oneliners for theme set Gamma. Much RoxasxNaminé love.

**Disclaimer: **Me no own KH. -bangbang-

* * *

**Tied Notes**

_Ring  
_He hears Naminé's window shatter from across the hall—alarm bells go off in his head in time to the sound.

_Hero  
_Naminé would like to ask Roxas if he's ever had any heroes, but something just doesn't seem right.

_Memory  
__If you think remembering things is hard, try forgetting, _he thinks, deep inside Sora's heart, long after his memories have grown up and gone away and no longer draw him pictures.

_Box  
_She's lived in a box all her non-life—but when he comes along with his quiet voice and his awkward smile and his eyes full of the sky, up comes the lid and the world flows inside.

_Run  
_"Keep running forward," she whispers to him as the gates to the mansion creak to let him through; even if she knows that he'll never quite be the same again, at least he won't disappear.

_Hurricane  
_Shapes upon shapes fill one page after another, dissolving inevitably into blots and squiggles and the sound of tearing paper, torn fragments flying in every direction; and he, listening at the door, wonders whose fictitious eyes she is seeing this new tragedy with.

_Wings  
_When Roxas tells her she's an angel, the words drip watermarks down the front of his coat because they're so heavy with meaning she doesn't even realize it; maybe she won't realize it, ever.

_Cold  
_He loops one arm around her shoulder, carelessly enough, and she curls against him like a kitten, carelessly enough—and he knows his conscience ought to be troubling him about it, but you have to have a heart to have a conscience, right?

_Red  
_She fills half the page with an explosion of red-gold-orange sunset, night-purple on the edges, and she takes far too much time smudging and blending because she can't figure out how to draw the boy who's supposed to be standing on top of the station tower.

_Drink  
_Naminé remembers that Roxas brought her tea, once, when she wasn't feeling too well and there was tea to be had—it was a little weak, but she drank all of it anyway, like a good girl.

_Midnight  
_He hears her through the thinness of the walls—the whisper of her steps, even the scratching of her pencils—and finds he doesn't know when the noise became enough to keep him awake.

_Temptation  
_"Don't open your eyes yet," she warns him, her voice coming out flustered instead of stern, her hands fumbling as they add the final touches to her picture; Roxas bites his lip and squeezes them shut.

_View  
_"Roxas, do you—" Naminé begins, one hand mixing paints, the other shading her eyes as she squints into the sunset, but he smiles and cuts her off with, "Sorry, I can only ever draw stupid-looking bowls of fruit."

_Music  
_Roxas knows he's not much good at making people laugh, but he tries for her anyway because it's the only music he really wants to listen to.

_Silk  
_Naminé can see him at the mansion's gate from where she stands by the upstairs window; the curtains seem to rustle, like they're shaking off dust in preparation, and she pats down her skirt without thinking about it.

_Cover  
_He lifts his palm over her eyes and whispers that it's okay, she doesn't have to see everything all the time; she presses close to him and cries into his glove because her eyes are still so empty.

_Promise  
_"Promise me you'll always stay just as you are," Naminé tells him one evening under he-knows-not-what pretext, fingers twisted around the fabric of his sleeve.

_Dream  
_"I had a b-bad dream, that's all," she says, the words tumbling over each other and leaving watermarks as they go, but he is kind enough to say nothing as he pulls the blanket back up to her chin.

_Candle  
_Some nights he stands in her doorway with a candle in hand—a tiny candle, so the light doesn't wake her—watching her dreams play out until the wax runs hot and white and painful in the cup of his palm, just because.

_Talent  
_She passes him one of her pencils; he twirls it in his fingers experimentally before passing it back with a sheepish grin—it feels too much like it'd break in his hand.

_Silence  
_She is not made of words, and often her sentences trail off into nothing but helpless circles of her hands, but he always knows how to read her right—even when what she says is all wrong.

_Journey  
_This time tomorrow, he'll be far, far away; now he just stands outside her door and wonders whether or not he should even turn the knob to say goodbye.

_Fire  
_Naminé doesn't think she'll ever quite get used to the way it feels when he holds her hand, because when he does embers leap from his fingers, traveling all the way up the length of her arm.

_Strength  
_She keeps all her drawings, crammed in drawers or lining the walls—and while he's been wanting to ask her for a long time what it is that makes her hold on to them all with such tenacity, he's never actually done so because he's afraid she would answer.

_Mask  
_"What's wrong?" he asks, when he looks through the door and catches her with a crayon in the air, staring holes in the wall for far too long—but Naminé only smiles when she hears him, dismisses it as one of those dry spots.

_Ice  
_Roxas wonders what will happen if she continues to take the world in, if she goes on trying to carry its weight; will it ever freeze her, turn her blue and bitter and still, like the rest of them?

_Fall  
_The fall from the station tower takes stupidly long to end; Roxas finds he has the time to call her name, and feel just a bit disappointed when he hears an entirely different voice respond.

_Forgotten  
_Sometimes he looks over his shoulder and finds precious little that hasn't suddenly turned to sand; sometimes he can't make out a face, or a name—just a voice, and quick, dark pencil-strokes.

_Dance  
_He holds her hands in both of his, mumbling that he doesn't know how, but she laughs and gives his fingers a brief squeeze to reassure him that she doesn't either.

_Body  
_Sometimes they can still see flashes of each other in Sora's and Kairi's eyes; they never last long, maybe just as long as the words, but they'll just have to do.

_Sacred  
_Crumpled pages fill the wastebasket, flow out in ink-stained little balls onto the floor, in the one corner of her room she doesn't let anyone touch—but that doesn't stop him from eyeing each one with a little consternation, as he shakes his head and sighs that he didn't know artists were such pack-rats.

_Farewells  
_She promises him that they will meet again, and then they can talk about everything—but she is gone so soon after that Roxas can't even ask her what "everything" is.

_World  
_Naminé's world has always been limited to a white, white room in a dark, dark city; she doesn't think she minds so much, when he comes through the door bringing stories.

_Formal  
_"I wish you wouldn't speak so formally to me," he says—smiles awkwardly, reaches out a hesitant hand to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear—but then the blood rushes to her face and she forgets.

_Fever  
_She asks if he's feeling all right, her curious eyes not a handspan from his own; he shudders and coughs and jerks up his collar to hide the scarlet on his cheeks.

_Laugh  
_He's stopped bringing his reports with him when he goes to visit her—the first time he did it, her particularly ridiculous doodles soon made their way onto his pages, they dissolved in laughter, and not a bit of work got done.

_Lies  
_"Love you," he whispers into her hair when he's sure she's not listening, and he knows he must be lying because how can he?

_Forever  
_There's no such word, of course, except maybe in books, or songs, or memories—but it's questions like, "How are you?" and "When will I see you again?" and "What are you thinking about?" that keep him hoping, just a little bit.

_Overwhelmed  
_Naminé looks at the pictures on the walls sometimes and feels like tearing them all down—they rarely turn out right now that he's not here.

_Whisper  
_Once in a while, Roxas says something so softly that the words fall away and get lost before she can catch them.

_Wait  
_"What do you do when you're running out of pictures?" he wants to know; Naminé replies, "Wait, of course," and smiles a little more sadly, a little more painfully than usual.

_Talk  
_It takes a bit of coaxing before she finally gets him to talk, but he is so full of stories that it's well worth the effort.

_Search  
_Roxas sometimes finds himself searching the faces of people on the street, but he's never been able to figure out what it is he's looking for, exactly.

_Hope  
_"He'll be back one of these days," mutters Axel, but Naminé sees his eyes go dark and hollow; he doesn't really believe it, so she's going to have to, for both of them.

_Eclipse  
_Sora's light is so bright that Naminé often loses sight of Roxas, and she can only imagine how difficult it must be when he looks for her in Kairi.

_Gravity  
_His eyes swivel up toward what he thinks is her window; it's only later that he realizes what a big mistake that was, when every step he takes away from the castle is mysteriously heavier and more difficult than the last.

_Highway  
_The road ahead is so long, but it has to be better than the darkness he sees when he looks back over his shoulder.

_Unknown  
_Axel fidgets and paces and asks all these questions about what she is, about _who _she is; Roxas simply half-smiles an _I don't really care._

_Lock  
_Naminé keeps her thoughts under a lock, with all her best drawings and the light that once shone in her eyes—she doesn't like it very much, but she doesn't exactly have a choice.

_Breathe  
_Roxas draws in a deep breath, eyes shut, lips sketched in a smile as his chest slowly rises and falls—then he looks at her sidelong, tells her wordlessly that as long as they can still do things like that, they'll be okay.


End file.
